"when the music was new, and had no rules" - Luna C aka Chris Kniteforce

Thursday, February 28, 2013

"House was everywhere in 2012 like it was a new idea. Like it had just
been invented. Like it had something new to say! Sadly, as someone who
first discovered house several decades ago (rather than just when
dubstep fell off) none of these felt true and its stiff, stifling
formula sleepwalked waves of former bass-heavy advocates into a sea of
mediocrity. Rather than drown in it, I broadly chose to swim elsewhere"

he recommends a heap of tunes, including a couple of jackin bassers that get past his electro-house- antipathy barricades (accepting jackin' when it's tracky -- isn't that to miss the point of JB a bit? what do you say, Dominic?)

but mainly repping for what he calls 'dark' which i guess is dark garage, which i guess is early Horsepower / "Dilemma" / Narrows

i must say it doesn't sound a whole heap much further on from 2001 but it's quite vibey

and naturally there's lots more subdivisions, mapping out of interzones and overlaps, convergences at various strata of b.p.m.

Great little label, not much talked about these days, bit like Rising High in that it moved around in a zone between acid, industrial-strength hardcore, breakbeat hardcore, hardtrance and UK tekno

Well well well - i knew it was mentally linked for me with Edge, and turns out that Gordon Edge, aka Gordon Matthewman, co-founded Rabbit City with Colin Faver in 1991.

Force Mass Motion was one of the main artists -- Michael Wells who i've always assumed was the same Michael Wells as in John + Julie / Technohead / Church of Ecstasy / Tricky Disco etc etc -- but apparently not

Probably the most under-rated DJ/Producer of the last 15 years. Gordon
Edge is a truly exceptional talent, combining the totally unique DJ
experience of 3 deck mixing while adding his own personal “edge” playing
Live Trumpet, he offers a versatile style and sound that is equally at
home when played at the biggest clubs in the world, as it is at the most
intimate private parties.

Whether it’s a dark dingy underground club in deepest darkest Siberia,
or dancing on the tables in the sunshine at Bora Bora, Ibiza, if you’re
lucky enough to catch Gordon in action it will be always be an
unforgettable experience that you will remember forever.

Gordons unique notoriety has kept him in continual high demand, as a DJ
Gordon has appeared in practically every country throughout the world
with 2008 being no exception. In this year alone he has rocked the
crowds in Lithuania, Spain, Germany, Kazakhstan, Bahrain, Dubai, Egypt,
Austria, Switzerland plus grand tours of Russia, India and South
America, including appearances at Pacha, Sirena & El Divino in
Brazil. After the success of this years India tour Gordon was honoured
to be asked to return to India for the Launch of GQ Magazine in Mumbai
amongst a whole host of ‘A list’ celebrities from the world of
Bollywood.

Ibiza, is Gordons second and spiritual home, after arriving on the
island in 1998 a 2 week holiday turned into a whole summer, and he fell
in love with the island so much he bought a home there! He quickly
became widely known as the DJ with the trumpet, and tagged the “trumpet
man” alias. He went on to become a regular feature at all the major
venues on the island, including Pacha, Space, Amnesia, Privilege &
El Divino and was soon snapped up for a coveted residency for the
infamous Bora Bora, where in season you can catch him playing his
marathon 5-8 hour sets at the worlds most renowned beach venue.

With such international demand it’s a wonder the Gordon ever gets time
to come home, but not forgetting his roots, back on UK terra firma he
holds a residency for Kinki Malinki, and is a regular feature for Mynt
in Belfast & The Gallery at Ministry of Sound.

As a trumpet player he not only played for Sade on her world tour but
also for Madonna at private parties she hosted in Miami & New York.

** Producer

Gordon has released over 170 12" records under such names as DJ Edge,
Trumpetman, Edge Test, Trumpet Thing, Digital Domain, Gordon Matthewman
& Gordon Edge, many of these on his own labels EDGE Records, Rabbit
City Records and XVX Records selling well over half million world wide.
True highlights have included legendary hardcore classic: ‘Edge *1 –
Compnded’ (1992), enormous Ibiza anthem: ‘Gordon Matthewman – Itza
Trumpet Thing’ (1998) & the Colossal ‘Gordon Edge - Set Your Body
Free / Trumpet Funk’, released on Eric Morillo’s award winning
Subliminal Label (2005). Gordon’s tracks have also featured on countless
compilations over the years, including Café Del Mar, Real Ibiza, Budda
Bar and many Ministry of Sound compilations. Now hard at work in the
studio again watch this space for the next exciting instalment from the
legend that is…GORDON EDGE

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Pretty good cover version of "Good Life", but the absolute best bits of it are the bits where it sounds exactly like the original - i.e. when the Glancing Light Beam Riff comes in.

Sublime!

Inner City are actually a band I've seen perform live, which is not something I can say of many techno or house legends. At Heaven, in early 92, when they were promoting stuff from the third LP Praise.

An uneasy mix of vocal house and hardcore.

This track though is a decent stab at the bleep sound (North of Watford mix, nice one Kev)

Kevin Saunderson was never afraid to move with the times, he had that primal gotta-shift-some-units instinct.... in that sense had more in common with Todd Terry than with the other two Bellevillites

As Tronikhouse, he went all out H-core - indeed put out a 3-tracker titled Hardcore Techno.

Wish he'd played those at Heaven. Instead it was all stuff off of Praise.

"Praise" itself came in a million mixes...

Back to Inner City's one true Moment ( and yes I never quite saw "Big Fun" as in the same league of sublimity) ... Parts of that Kaori remix seem to involve doing "Good Life" in a style that predates Inner City. e.g. the phased-vocal-disco of Raw Silk "Do It the Music" or something vaguely Brazil-1970s or sultry percussive Sleeping Bag-esque...

Thursday, February 21, 2013

it's
not Julie Christie's version of "Bushes and Briars" (actually voiced by Isla
Cameron, song advisor on Far From Madding Crowd) that DJ Seduction and Bumble sampled (Bumble first, then sampled by Seduction, presumably?).... So whose version was it? Nobody seems to know...

info about the song scooped off the net:

The song "Bushes and Briers" was 'collected' by Ralph Vaughan Williams at
Ingrave, Essex, on 4th December, 1903, from the singing of Mr Charles
Pottipher, a seventy-year-old labourer."Vaughan Williams had
been specifically invited by the local Vicar's daughters to attend an
old people's tea-party their father was giving, so that he could meet
some real traditional singers. In fact, he only noted the first verse of
Bushes and Briars from Mr. Pottipher, being then new to
song-collecting, and later got the rest of the words from a broadside
published by Fortey of Seven Dials." (from the Mudcat thread, below)The
Essex version is perhaps the best known because of its inclusion in the
film of Thomas Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd".

LYRICS: Through Bushes and through briars I lately took my wayAll for to hear the small birds sing And the lambs to skip and playI overheard my own true loveHer voice it was so clear"Long time I have been waiting for The coming of my dearSometimes I am uneasyAnd troubled in my mindSometimes I think I'll go to my loveAnd tell to him my mindBut if I should go to my loveMy love he would say nay!If I show to him my boldnessHe'll ne'er love me again."

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Matthew Ingram's excellent write-up of the new Autechre lp (as much a career to date overview as a review of exai) in the latest issue of The Wiremade me want to reconsider their oeuvre.... which I'd always distantly respected but never really loved ... indeed most of the CDs I'd got rid of a few years ago in a fit of hardhearted purging...

Thought I'd start at the beginning and go all the way through...

I never fully registered before that Autechre started out as near-enough hardcore with "Cavity Job" - nail-gun breaks and acideous gabble and sample-smear riffs, not a million miles from DJ Trax and Rabbit City and Edge#1 'Cmpnd' (very Autechre-ish title now i think of it). Makes perfect sense, though, seeing as Booth & Brown were electro kids into graffiti, just like your Danny Breaks and Liam Howletts and Hypes and so forth.

The Legofeet stuff (which I guess is strictly speaking before the beginning) is protean and protozoan -- sketches and doodles that are fractured intimations and hinting glimpses-forward to jungle, IDM, and the avant-beatizm of such as Req (Skint's purveyor of deconstructed hip hop)

Now onto the albums proper...

Req = very Autechre-like in its conversion of B-boyism ("wreck") into something ciphered and abstracted and also graphically pleasing...

Sunday, February 10, 2013

but this tune, number 2 in the UK pop charts at the moment, doesn't sound particularly 2steppy to me

can't hear much bump 'n' flex there...

still, definitely a 90s retro-dance vybe

track sounds weirdly compressed to me, frequency range scrunched, like it's been mixed to sound good through a phone

number 2, up 26 places in a week! even in its much-reduced present state, that's one thing you can still say for the UK chart: it does let in some out of left-field, up-from-below stuff, unlike Billboard which effectively screens out anything that hasn't got a huge machine behind it....

then again, number #1 on Billboard, and in the UK pop charts too , is Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" and that's self-released

a few things missing - this first one is a bit of a major omission in my humble

so i guess Tom and Jerry was 4 Hero's crowdpleaser alter-ego... the outlet for tunes that were rinsing and pretty, not experimental or out-there - low-pressure output, maybe, knocked out quicker, without that self-imposed self-daunting expectation of surpassing themselves, breaking new ground each time (which would explain why T&J was shunted out, in great volume, via a different label, Shell, not through Reinforced itself)

then again - this one is pretty weird and abstract - so maybe not - maybe the lines got blurred